Chapter 20 Kaira
KAIRA
I was no stranger to the hollowness in my chest, or to that numb, frozen state where you couldn't move, speak, or look away from one single spot.
My eyes couldn't look away from the trampled grass next to my feet, or the specks of golden blood I had failed to see before, escaping Lysander's eyes, ears, and mouth while I had my hands on him.
Elandra took him away—still breathing, still alive, but that didn't erase the fact that I was capable of killing him.
I was capable of destroying someone who was supposed to be almost indestructible. I felt his immortality under my fingertips when I touched that pretty little string wrapped around his heart. The string of life, of who he was. Of what he was.
The rain kept pelting my skin, hissing away the heat the moment it touched me. Too much anger burned beneath the surface. Too much wrath—at myself, at the secrets surrounding me, at the destiny wrapped around my bones with no way out.
Silence was the welcome reprieve when everyone left, but he stayed.
Hades stood just behind me after releasing me, letting me stand on my own two feet, as if he was guarding me.
But was he really guarding me or was he guarding everyone else from me?
I couldn't tell, and I couldn't look at him, for fear of seeing the disgust and terror I saw in Lysander's eyes just before they turned white and his body collapsed to the ground.
Sometimes the hardest thing was looking within yourself and seeing your demons for what they were. But all this time I thought I was fighting against the current of grief, when in reality I was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. Waiting to fucking annihilate everyone around me.
There were bits and pieces I'd been trying to put together.
The prophecy.
The fact that I was the daughter of the God of Death.
The fact that Zeus and many of the other Gods wanted the power I wielded.
We were supposedly at war, yet the only war I could feel was ravaging my insides, warping everything I was into the version I didn't think I liked.
Most of all, I hated the still apparent tingling at the tips of my fingers.
I hated the energy coiling deep in my gut, slowly spreading through the rest of my body.
Now that the silence enveloped me, leaving me only with the sound of the wind picking up and the angry rain hitting my skin, I could feel the power they were telling me about.
My hand lifted of its own accord, letting me see the shadows seeping from my fingertips.
Like a billowing smoke, the darkness rose from my palm, spreading higher and higher, warming my hand and then my arm as dark claws dragged over my forearm and all the way to my bicep.
The voices, the whispers—I heard them so many times this past year, yet I always thought it was my mind playing tricks on me.
I always thought it was the grief and debilitating pain that existed in my body that had me hearing voices.
But it was this. This power. This fucking curse.
There was no other way to explain it as I felt the full force of what it could do.
As the shadows reached my throat, wrapping around with a caress softer than anything I had ever felt before, I could feel its fury, its yearning to be released, seeping into my skin.
Calling, begging, asking to take what belongs to me.
And it didn't want to harm me. It didn't want to destroy me, but everyone else standing in my path.
My left hand rose, going over the shadowy smoke erupting from my right palm, letting it crawl over it and covering my skin with its dark tendrils.
"Kaira—" came from behind me. That velvety, raspy voice was almost enough to make me stop what I was doing, but I didn't want to turn around.
He was hiding things from me as well. They all were, treating me like a child, throwing me into training sessions, into this whirlwind and talking in circles, while I patiently waited and fucking waited for someone to give me the whole truth.
He was no longer standing right behind me, but I could feel his aura, his energy, reaching to touch my own.
Now that I could see these shadows, this darkness that was a part of me, I could sense everything else much better.
I could sense the hum of vitality spreading through the ground underneath my feet and the soft call from the trees surrounding us.
I could feel the eyes on me from the crows observing the scene, slowly coming closer and closer to us, until they landed not far from me, their dark eyes looking up at me.
Hades kept quiet, his eyes on the back of my head, but I was done waiting for them to tell me what I needed to know.
"No more lies." I turned around, facing him for the first time since he came to the field. "Not one single fucking lie. I want to know what I'm capable of. I want to know how it is possible that I could kill a God. Any God."
His tired eyes dragged over my face, his fingers flexing at the sides of his body as if he too craved to touch me as much as I wanted to touch him. But whatever this connection between us was, it could wait. It had to fucking wait.
"So, tell me, Hades. Tell me the fucking truth!"
There was no hesitation when he took a step closer to me.
There was no trepidation even when his eyes landed on the shadows slithering over my skin, and like their twin, his pushed out, peeking from behind his shoulder, wanting to play with the curious force living inside me.
I was wrong in my observation before, because his shadows were not shadows at all.
Now, in the daylight, even covered with the rain and clouds looming above us, I could see the bright green flashes pushing through the shadowy swirls wrapping over his arms, and all the way to his fingers.
Hades stopped barely a couple of inches away from me, close enough for our hands to touch if we wanted them to, and as if those shadows of his could read my mind they pushed toward me, his arm lifting as a frown appeared on his face.
The cries I thought I had heard this morning weren't cries at all. The voices weren't screaming for help. They were calling me.
Remember.
Remember, Kaira.
We need you to remember.
Remember.
Over and over again, the cacophony of voices erupted in my ears and as I looked down, my newest companions were reaching for him. Whispering, yearning, and frantically trying to touch him.
Taking a step back, I could see the harsh inhale and pain spreading over his features, but I wasn't playing this game anymore. I wasn't playing any of their games.
"You are the death, Kaira," he finally said.
His words bounced around my mind, like an echo of everything Elandra had already said, but this time those vague sentences weren't enough. I wanted the full truth.
"I keep hearing that, but I'm yet to hear what that means," I bit out, my eyes refusing to leave him.
Dark hair fell over his forehead, soaked from the rain, but neither one of us dared to move.
Suspended in time, just the two of us, engaged in a staring battle, each waiting for the other to back down.
But I wasn't backing down.
The thunderous skies roared above us, reflecting my own feelings, and with one flick of his left eyebrow he simply smiled, shaking his head as if that didn't bother him.
"I can see you're angry."
"You have no idea what I am," I snapped back. None of them had any idea how I felt. Perhaps I didn't even know the full depth of my feelings, but seeing Lysander fighting to breathe…
Seeing what I could do woke me up.
My core shook from the power I wielded, both terrifying and exciting, feeding into my muscles, into the very essence of who I was.
Knowing who my father was wasn't enough anymore.
Knowing I was being targeted wasn't enough either.
"I'm not sure I'm the correct person to reveal th—"
"I don't care," I interjected. "Considering that every single one of you keeps going in circles, I'd like for at least someone to start talking, or I'll lose my shit."
"Kore—"
"No!" My voice thundered over the meadow, cutting him off.
"First of all." I took a step forward, my finger lifting and pointing at him.
"My fucking name isn't Kore," I bit out.
"My name is Kaira Vale, and since I came to this island everyone's been throwing things at me.
" Taking a deep breath, my eyes connected with his, giving him all my pain.
All my rage. "Information, vague facts, but not one of you has deemed it necessary to tell me the entire truth.
" My chest rose and fell as my blood pressure skyrocketed.
The shadows wrapped around my arms, extending to my fingers, reaching for him.
"I have no idea what I am. Hell," I laughed humorlessly, "I don't even know who I am anymore. "
"I think you need to calm down," he said, instead of sharing anything. So fucking collected, only igniting the fury inside me more and more.
"Don't fucking tell me to calm down," I seethed.
"I almost killed Lysander because no one told me what those powers are.
I almost fucking killed him, and for some reason my trigger was you.
My fucking trigger was a man who I don't even know.
A man whose eyes I kept seeing for almost a year.
A man whose fucking shadows seems to be wanting to play with mine.
So tell me, oh mighty Hades. What the fuck is going on? "
His head tilted, observing me, dragging those emerald orbs over my face as if he was seeing me for the first time. As if he hadn't seen me this morning. As if he hadn't left me with a gaping hole inside my chest.
As if every single word from his lips didn't feel like a punch to my fucking soul since we came to Elandra's place.
"I don't think you're ready for that conversation, Kaira," he emphasized my name.
"And the reason why I call you Kore is because it means maiden in the old language," he added, that voice staying perfectly calm while the storm wrapped around every atom inside my body. "You're angry at the wrong people and—"
"At this point, Hades," I cut through his bullshit, "you belong to the group of people who are withholding the information from me.
You belong to the group of people, immortals, whatever the fuck you want to call yourselves, that's actually lying through their teeth.
I asked you several times what the connection was between the two of us and I know you know.
I can fucking see it in your eyes." I took a step closer.
My palms landed on his chest as I pushed him away.
"I can see the torment in you as clearly as I can feel mine, but you're still refusing to spill the truth.
Why?" I pushed again. "Why are you all refusing to tell me the truth? "
His fingers wrapped around my wrists, bringing me closer to him. I tilted my head, looking up at him, seeing for the first time since Elandra left with Lysander, the emotions playing in those eyes. He seemed so indifferent, so fucking cold mere seconds ago, but now a new fire flared in him.
The fury mirroring my own sat there, waiting to be unleashed.
His pressure on my wrists increased, but it was not pain I felt.
It was need. The insane urge to be with him, to touch him, to kiss him, to give him everything I am.
The green of his shadows slammed against my dark ones, entwining, whispering, soothing the sharp edges of my soul.
My eyes landed on his lips, on the restrained anger lingering at the edges, and I wanted him to release it.
And just like with Lysander, I focused on him, on his core. Closing my eyes I could already see the emerald green orb, existing deep within his soul.
"Stop it, Kaira," he warned, but I wasn't listening to him. "Kaira!"
My fingers stretched out toward the dim emerald green orb, desperate to touch it, to feel it.
It wasn't as warm as Lysander's. It wasn't as bright like his either, but there was power here I had never felt before.
Power that could consume. Power that could destroy, yet he kept it away from me, fighting me as I dug deeper, seeing through his psyche.
"Stop this insanity. You don't want to know the truth. Not yet!" He was inside my head, inside my mind, but he wasn't stronger than me. I could see it as clear as day—Hades wasn't stronger than me and the mere knowledge of that made me push him outside of my head.
I dove deeper and deeper, hearing the screams of the souls belonging to him, to the Underworld. I dove deeper still into the emerald orb calling my name, whispering for me to come.
My hand connected with it, digging into the center of his soul, but what I saw wasn't the big secret of what I was. What stared back at me was pain, grief, and an overwhelming urge to disappear, to die.
"No."
There was a severed thread leading from his core, suspended in the dark, carrying the rotting stench of death.
Hades… Hades was dying.
He was slowly disappearing, bit by bit, year by year.
And as my right hand wrapped around the lone piece, it slithered around my wrist, squeezing painfully, cutting off my blood supply.
A piercing pain shot through my head, slicing me in half, and as I tried pulling back, freeing myself from the pain, I fell backwards into the dark hole.
Darker than anything I had ever seen before, letting it swallow me whole while the thread stayed attached to me, falling into the dark void together with my mind.